Record sales enjoy record year!

Our good friends at ERA (Entertainment Retailers Association) have just published some encouraging data regarding sales of recorded music in 2017…

The Brits spent a record £7.2billion on entertainment last year, which was nearly 9% up on 2016 sales.

The major growth (not surprisingly) came from streaming of music, plus video and computer games.

It is worth mentioning that this growth is four times faster than that of the total UK economy.

Music growth with Spotify and Apple Music etc. grew by nearly 10%, a record year, once again.

Physical sales of music with CD’s dropped by 12% on 2016, but Vinyl grew by nearly 27% year on year with 4 million LP’s being sold.

Vinyl now equates to one in 10 “physical” music purchases.

Interesting to note that once you get past Ed Sheeran at Number 1 in the 2017 vinyl charts, you then see Fleetwood Mac, Oasis, Pink Floyd, Bowie and The Beatles making up the rest of the Top 10!

So, aside from the debatable royalty rates that artists are paid from some of the streaming services, this would appear to be a positive set of figures and can only be good for the UK’s continued love affair with music!